Mark Billingham - Bloodline

Looking through her notes on the train, she had been unable to stop thinking about their session the night before. She wondered how the state he had been in – might still be in – had affected his ability to handle the inquiry. Had it weighed him down or fired him up? She knew that personal problems usually had an impact one way or the other, and remembered a spell of a few months, twenty years earlier, when she and Jack had been going through a rocky patch. Afterwards, to satisfy her curiosity, she had checked and been amazed to see that her arrest record had been better than ever.

She hoped it worked out the same way for Thorne.

It was a short trip from Reading station to Caversham, a small district a few minutes to the north of the town on the other side of the Thames. The taxi, whose driver gave a running commentary throughout the journey, crossed a large and ornate bridge into an area that looked more like the centre of a chocolate-box English village than a commuter suburb. He finally pulled up – as per Chamberlain’s instructions – a hundred yards or so short of a tidy-looking terraced house set back from the road and within spitting distance of the river.

Walking up to the house, Chamberlain could see rowing boats and steamers moored on both sides of the river, and a pair of swans treading water in mid-stream while a group of kids threw bread from the far bank, trying to spin the slices, like frisbees.

‘Got him, right in the neck,’ one of them shouted.

‘See if you can do it again…’

Chamberlain had already decided that, should the worst happen, she would move, a little nearer to London maybe, and that this was the kind of place she would choose. She loved being near the water, and though this stretch of river had a little less character, it was probably a damn sight cleaner than the English Channel.

And some of the people here were under fifty.

The door was opened by a surly-looking girl, aged fourteen or so, who stared at Chamberlain, careful not to open the door too far. Chamberlain remembered her notes. This would be Nicola, Sandra’s daughter by her third husband, who would be at work as manager of the local Tesco’s. Chamberlain toyed with freaking out the sour-faced little cow by using her name, but instead she just produced her photo ID and asked the girl if her mother was at home.

After a few seconds, the girl backed away from the door, then pushed it until it was almost closed again before disappearing. While Chamberlain waited, hearing the girl’s footsteps on the stairs followed by a muffled conversation, she started to believe that this was all going to work out the way everybody wanted. She wondered if the girl knew anything about a half-brother twice her age, a serial killer who might well have babysat her.

The woman apologised as she yanked the door wide. ‘Sorry… she’s not very chatty at the best of times,’ she said. ‘And she doesn’t like to see me upset.’

‘Oh, right. Is everything OK?’

The woman cocked her head. ‘I don’t understand. She said you were police.’

‘I’m working with the police, yes, but-’

‘So, you haven’t come about…’ The woman gave a small shake of her head, seeing the confusion on Chamberlain’s face. ‘Sorry, I just presumed. We’ve had a death in the family and I thought that’s why you were here.’

‘Oh… I’m sorry,’ Chamberlain said. ‘What happened?’

The woman leaned her head against the edge of the door. ‘One of those things, love. Poor bugger was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all, ran into some nutter. We weren’t exactly close, if I’m honest, but still, it’s a shock.’

Chamberlain waited.

‘My nephew,’ the woman said, nodding. ‘Not even thirty! God only knows when they’ll let me bury him, mind you.’

Chamberlain cleared her throat and the woman’s eyes flashed to hers. ‘Well, apologies if this is an awkward time, but I actually wanted to have a word with you about Raymond Garvey.’

The woman blinked and slowly straightened.

‘A name from the past, I know,’ Chamberlain said. ‘And this is probably a bit out of the blue.’

‘Well, yes and no.’

‘Sorry?’

The smile was somewhere between relief and resignation, and it remained in place as Sandra Phipps took a step back into her dimly lit hallway. ‘I’d better make us both a drink,’ she said.

Gibbons brought up sandwiches and cold drinks for lunch, moaning about being a glorified waiter and looking horrified when Spibey invited him to join the game. Before he left, he pointed out that at least one of them needed to stay on duty downstairs. ‘You know, do the job we’re being paid for.’

Now that one is a stickler, Spibey thought.

After an hour or so, Dowd was well ahead, with several well-organised stacks of chips in front of him, and was even able to sub Fowler, who had lost heavily early on to both the other players. Taking the last game into account, Spibey was still down overall, and was keen to exert a little more pressure. Luck was one thing, he thought, but he was far and away the most experienced player at the table. On top of which – he smiled to himself – neither of them was exactly playing with a full deck.

‘Just to remind you,’ he said. ‘Brag is different to poker and a run beats a flush. You both clear about that?’

Fowler laughed and tossed a few more chips into the pot. ‘Yeah, fine, but I don’t believe you’ve got either.’

‘Mind games,’ Dowd said. ‘It’s the sort of crap they pull on people in interview rooms.’ He pushed enough chips across the table to match Spibey’s bet. ‘Call…’

Spibey nodded thoughtfully, but was unable to contain a broad grin as he laid down ace-king-queen. The grin became a chuckle as Fowler and Dowd groaned in disbelief and threw away their hands. Spibey gathered in the chips. ‘You’ve got coppers all wrong,’ he said. ‘We’re the honest ones.’

Dowd had collected the cards and was already shuffling. ‘So, tell us honestly then, do you normally catch this kind of killer?’

‘Nothing normal about this bloke.’

‘Do you?’

Spibey was stacking his winnings. ‘Look, I’m just on babysitting duty. I don’t really know the ins and outs of it.’

‘Come on…’

‘You’d be better off talking to Thorne.’

‘Would he be honest?’

‘Probably not.’

‘You going to deal or not?’ Fowler snapped.

Dowd raised an eyebrow at Spibey. ‘How long since you had your medicine, Graham?’

Fowler stared for a few seconds, unblinking across the table, then calmly reached for his cigarettes. ‘I’m having all that, mate.’ He pointed at Spibey’s stack. ‘Every last chip.’

‘Easy to say when you’re not playing with your own money,’ Dowd said.

‘You’ll get it back.’

‘What, you going to sell a few Big Issues?’

Fowler smiled, his mood appearing to change again suddenly. ‘When they set us up with these new identities, they’ll have to give us a bit of cash, won’t they? Something to get us started.’

‘Look, it’s all academic,’ Spibey said. ‘Because you won’t be winning jack-shit.’ He reached for his cards. ‘I’m telling you, I’ve hit a lucky streak.’

Fowler lit his cigarette. ‘It’ll change,’ he said.

Sandra Phipps was not a short woman, but she still showed every pound of the excess weight she carried. Round-faced and having done nothing to disguise the grey in her hair, she moved slowly, ushering Chamberlain into a small, overheated living room. ‘You’re welcome to have tea,’ she said. Her voice was flat and there was the hint of a wheeze in her breathing. ‘But I think I might need something a bit stronger, so…’